Media Talk; Tribal Leaders Dismiss American Indian Editor

By CHARLIE LeDUFF

Published: July 6, 1998

For friends of the printed word, the good news is that American Indian media continue to grow on the more than 500 reservations nationwide, financed in part by gambling revenues and land settlements.

The bad news for American Indian journalists is that First Amendment guarantees rarely apply on the reservation.

From the Hopi and Navajo Nations in the Southwest to the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma and the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin, editors who try to present a balanced picture of their communities and tribal governments often find themselves at odds with their publishers. And in nearly all cases, the publishers are the tribal governments.

The latest case comes from the Lummi Nation, a tribe of 5,000 living 90 miles north of Seattle. Tribal officials closed a newspaper, Squol Quol, last month, a week after the newspaper's editor, Fredrick Lane, was dismissed.

Henry Cagey, the Lummi tribal chairman, said the reason was that the newspaper and its editor were not meeting the community's needs. ''The message we were getting from the community is that they were not fully informed,'' Mr. Cagey said.

Mr. Lane was dismissed for printing a letter by Marlene Dawson, a county councilwoman, to Senator Slade Gorton, Republican of Washington, that said federally financed Lummi schools were ''incubators of racism.''

Mr. Cagey said the tribal business council told Mr. Lane not to run the letter because the tribe was trying to build a good relationship with the county and Federal governments. The tribe's main source of revenue is a $28 million Federal grant.

The quick hook is to be expected when government owns the means of production, said Mark Anthony Rolo, editor of The Circle, an independent American Indian magazine based in Minneapolis.

''Reservations are basically one big family,'' Mr. Rolo said. ''These jobs are handed out by relatives with the promise of publishing within certain parameters: Not to publish negative things about the tribe.'' CHARLIE LeDUFF